Panorama
reviewer: “Almost everything else was some
version of the simple chord structure abundant in
the music of Lord Kitchener... Kitchener's
unwillingness or inability to provide the panmen
with something new and different... no alternatives
to Kitchener’s recyclable melodies...”
Panist
Ken “Professor” Philmore: “The types of chords that
Kitchener plays—and I think any arranger would agree
with me on this—Kitchener plays the kinds of chords
that you can explore and use your own
imagination..."
In one
fell swoop the aforementioned magazine reviewer
bared his neophyte’s status and called into question
all other commentary in a presumably
well-intentioned critique. Say that Lord Kitchener
can’t dance, say that his lyrics don’t grab you, say
he’s too tall, say anything
except
that his
musical concoctions custom-made for the pan feature
an abundance of “simple chord structures” and/or
“recyclable melodies.” Such a fundamental
misstatement of
musical
fact is
unpardonable in anyone who would offer judgments for
mass consumption.
Ken
Philmore, on the other hand, who has adorned
Kitchener’s “pan tune” performances the past four
years with his talented presence, knows what
everyone else knows who is even slightly of musical
bent. Namely, that the pan product outflow from
Kitchener bears the unmistakable stamp of a
consummate pro who meticulously goes about the
business of keeping his commitment to furnish
material that best appeals to the panist’s basic
instincts.
Take a
gander at the laundry list of steel band-themed or
steel band-minded Kitchener compositions. Get under
the likes of
Symphony in G, No Pan, Pan in the 21st Century
and it’s literally raining harmonic niceties all
over the place. Psyching us into believing that the
goody bag has been shaken free of all possible
contents with leviathan efforts on the order of
Pan in Harmony
and
Sweet Pan,
Kitch
somehow digs even deeper to come up with the
“fierceness” of a
Pan Night and Day.
An
absolutely sizzling
Pan in A Minor
for 1987
demonstrates how much he revels in the Kitch vs
Kitch game of “Can You Top This?” Where does it end
and what on earth is the motivation?
Alter ego
Philmore, who says there has developed quite a
closeness between Kitchener and himself as a result
of their four- year association, offers an insight:
“Kitchener can’t play pan, but he naturally loves
it. I think he realizes that he has that special
ability to create pan music because year in, year
out, he listens to other calypsonians who do tunes
that they think bands would take for the Panorama
and he knows that he has an advantage.”
|
 |
photo: Carl Newallo |
Kitch at home:
“I don’t compose road marches
anymore. I compose party songs.”
|
Kitch,
for his part, would take you back to his very
origins as a professional trouper to show the pan
connection. When, as a young man, he left his native
Arima in northeastern Trinidad to ply his trade as a
maker and singer of calypsoes in the city of Port of
Spain, he wound up living, as fate would have it, in
a particular location (La Court Harpe) in the city’s
East Dry River section, which was the home of Bar
20, one of the fabled early steel bands (such as
they then were). “I lived right there with them,” he
recalls, “so I was around the steel band since it
was born. In fact since before it was born because
at that time (1944) it was just a percussion band,
with a bugle. They didn’t play notes, just rhythm.
An
intuitive Kitchener saw a great future, even at that
stage, for the rough-hewn assemblage that then
constituted a steel band, and the first-ever calypso
saluting pan music,
The Beat of a Steel Band,
was
unleashed. “I visualized that in time to come the
pans would actually be playing music,” he remembers
with obvious pride. “In the composition I called the
names of some of the players of that Bar 20 band—
Zigilee, Pops and so on.”
Another
pan tribute tune would follow shortly, wherein Kitch
offered the budding musical novelty as the most
potent weapon to throw into the fray to thwart
Hitler in his march for power (“No bayonet no gun /
Just the beating of the steel sure to make you run
/ Adolph be on your guard / When meeting the steel band
from Trinidad”).
So that
by the time 26-year-old Aldwyn Roberts and his Lord
Kitchener moniker were England-bound after the
Carnival season of 1947 with aspirations to “make
it” in the Mother Country, there had already been
definite signs of a special affection for the steel
band. Even while in England, isolated from the
developing pan scenario back home, his
Beware Tokyo Beware
would
surface as proof that the ties hadn’t at all been
broken once he lit out for challenging new fields.
It would
be 1962 before he could deal with the pan syndrome
from an up-close perspective. That’s when he
relocated to Trinidad, late in the year, in time for
Carnival 1963. The king of the Carnival road march
(most popular tune) was back, and he dutifully did
his thing for ‘63 with
The Road.
For the
steel bands, the ranks of the music suppliers now
included someone who had a real feel for what
embodied the quintessential panist’s turn-on. It
showed. In 14 Carnival celebrations in the 1963—1976
span, Kitchener came up with the road march title no
fewer than ten times.
 |
“Music is what I’m looking for. Once I get
the music—those chords and that melody—then
finding a theme is easy.” |
Kitch
readily acknowledges that he has, over the years,
written particular music “with the steel band in
mind.” As to the secret of his amazing success,
there’s this elucidation: “I made the steel band a
real study. I know the runs and the notes that mean
something to the sound of the band. I can hear the
sound of the tenor pan.” Given the record, it’s an
assertion that is hard to dispute.
There are
certain entries that have an undeniably “landmark”
quality as one burrows through the Kitchener parade
of pan targeted hits. There’s the extended melody of
67 in 1967, which sported the then-unusual device of
a two-bridge verse, making for a multi-part creation
with each element, moreover, having its own distinct
character. Kitch believes 1970 to be the year he
“began to challenge the bands.” The tune was
Margie,
which did
indeed introduce a measure of chordal complexity not
evident earlier. “I just kept on challenging them
after that,” he says.
Kitch’s
offerings in the decade of the 70’s would culminate
in a veritable cannon blast. Never one to shy away
from reaffirming his abilities on the musical front,
Kitch relates in the lyrics to 1979’s
Symphony in G
that “the
players contacted me / For they thought I was just
the man” when it was felt there should be a symphony
for pans that Carnival. With its dramatic minor key
beginning and on through to the clever use of
patently classical lines in the chorus,
Symphony in G
has
been hailed by many in and around the pan music
world as a masterpiece. Ironically, 1979 would also
be the year of a steel band boycott for Trinidad’s
Carnival. Clive Bradley’s brilliant arrangement of
Symphony in G
for
Desperadoes would assume legendary proportions not
as much for musical impact as social commentary,
when a recalcitrant Despers broke ranks to perform
the number for pan-starved crowds.
But by
the late 70’s, anyway, the pendulum was swinging
away from steel bands to brass bands and DJ’s as the
major source of Carnival music in Trinidad. With the
trend intensifying in the 80’s, Kitch today says, “I
don’t compose road marches anymore. I compose party
songs. The way things are in Trinidad now, any of
these songs could wind up as road march. But I don’t
set out to write a road march as I used to years
ago.”
He does,
however, set out to write a pan tune, the focus,
latterly, being clearly the Panorama competition. A
turn of events whose wisdom is being questioned by
more and more observers, the Panorama has become,
for most of Trinidad & Tobago’s steel bands, the
totality of Carnival. While acknowledging that
there’s cause for concern, Kitch has been going with
the flow. “It’s a difficult thing,” he notes,
“something that will take some time to study.”
 |
“I was around the steel band since it was
born. In fact, since before it was born
because at that time [1944] it was just a
percussion band, with a bugle.”
|
Philmore
has been in position to observe that Kitchener
“takes a really serious interest in Panorama. If he
has to be at the calypso tent (improvised theatre)
while Panorama is going on, he has his transistor
with him, listening to the bands. Not just to the
various arrangements of his tune, but to all the
bands. He listens and comments about what they are
doing. Except for the conflict, because of his tune
being played in the competition, I think Kitchener
would be an excellent judge for Panorama.”
Kitchener
confirms the avid interest and spells out the
dilemma: “We can’t do without Panorama. The people
love it. They come from all over the country for it.
So you can’t just eliminate Panorama from Carnival.”
If they do, they
eliminate the last bastion of the mini-epic that has
been Kitchener’s annual work of pan art. Again,
Aldwyn Roberts immodestly, albeit indirectly,
touting Kitchener’s superior skill: “It is extremely
difficult to compose music for the pan. You must
have an idea of pan music. Pan music is not just
ordinary music—and when I say pan music I don’t mean
jump-up (dance) music, I’m talking about pan in
competition—and that kind of music is not easy.” It
could take up to six weeks, working intermittently,
he reveals, to fashion one of his steel band-themed
pieces. Not surprisingly, first comes the harmonic
construction. Apart from knowing that the subject
area is the world of pan, he generally has no idea,
when he starts working on one of these
“made-for-pan” specials, what the particular topic
will be. Lyrics and a title are last in the process.
“I know the kinds of chords I want in the tune —
that’s all I know. And it might take me a while to
put those chords together. Music is what I’m looking
for. Once I get the music, those chords and that
melody, then finding a theme is easy. The music is
the hard part.”
The wonder is that with
such a seeming obsession for steel music, Kitch is
not himself a pan player. He is, after all, known
among musicians as a more than capable bassist. But
he is quick to point out that “I don’t know anything
about pan—I can’t play it at all.” Philmore says he
has often teased Kitch while they’re away on tour
with lots of time to kill. “I tell him ‘here are the
sticks; pick out something, man.’ But he never takes
me up on it.” Kitch is evidently content to mount
his musical sketches with the bass as the tool of
choice or, to a lesser extent, the guitar which, as
he says, “I half-way play.”
What of the future?
This elder statesman of calypso, first of all,
entertains no thought whatsoever of hanging it up.
Alongside such resolve comes his commitment to
continue to do material for and about the pan idiom
(although it’s left to be seen how that
determination might be affected by a rather
convoluted attempt at copyright protection, vis a
vis steel bands and calypso composers, that they’re
now flirting with in Trinidad & Tobago). One senses,
though, that Kitchener’s identification with the
steel band culture is so strong that he will not
easily be deterred from creating more music of the
realm.
Kitchener, indeed, has been for so long the only
consistently reliable “production center” for
ready-made pan material of the calypso genre that a
change in that situation would take some getting
used to. He has suggested that, excluding himself,
among calypsonians only the late Maestro (“he wasn’t
ashamed to tell me he had made me a study”) appeared
likely to have the capacity to routinely come up
with prime fodder for steel bands. But a “new wave”
of pan-oriented composers, spearheaded by Ray Holman
and Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, might finally be ready to
break loose and make its presence felt, after
several years of relative obscurity. The copyright
confusion could again be pivotal here.
Through
it all—the changes, would-be changes or business as
usual—Lord Kitchener remains a constant. He has been
a marvel, no doubt about that. His association with
the steel band phenomenon has been shown, quite
emphatically, to be no fly-by-night affair. Perhaps
it suffices as tribute to such unflagging dedication
that Kitchener’s work is performed each year for
Carnival, generally more than anyone else’s. But the
sum total of his effort has been of such herculean
dimensions that there should be some forum provided
for more profound savoring of the Kitchener
largesse.
Maybe
sometime, preferably before he has written and
performed his last pan tune, some enterprising and
talented group of panists should prepare for public
airing a full-blown Kitchener suite, encompassing
the countless gems from his prolific pen over the
years. Those who have ears to hear will be treated
not to “simple chord structures” or “recyclable
melodies” but a body of work that is, to date, the
definitive representation of calypso, as the form,
and steel band, as the medium, in the kind of
rhapsodic mating that is only very rarely achieved.
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Republished
from - PAN -
Fall 1985 - Vol.1 No.1
Editor-in-Chief:
Leslie
Slater
at
-
slater.pro40@gmail.com
Senior Associate Editor:
Dalton Narine
at -
narain67@gmail.com
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